Ferrari revealed the Luce, its first fully electric car, and the reaction was swift and almost entirely negative. The Luce is a five-seat, four-door EV powered by four motors, one at each wheel, producing around 1,350 horsepower according to Ferrari's figures. Range is estimated at just under 300 miles on the US cycle, slightly more on the European WLTP standard. The design was developed in-house by Ferrari then handed to Jony Ive, the designer best known for the iPhone, who added finishing touches and interior detailing. The car is reported to be priced at around $600,000. Ferrari's stock fell roughly five percent on the day of the announcement. Former Ferrari CEO Luca di Montezemolo, the man widely credited with rebuilding the modern brand, publicly stated that the car risked destroying a myth and called for the prancing horse badge to be removed from it. The This Car Pod episode captures the moment in real time, recorded immediately after the reveal.
The core problem with the Luce, as the podcast lays out, is not that Ferrari made an electric car. It's that they made a generic one. A 0-60 time in the region of 2.5 seconds is quick, but the Lucid Air Sapphire covers the same distance in under two seconds at roughly a third of the Luce's price. Ferrari is asking buyers to pay a $600,000 premium for a car that is not the fastest, not the rarest, and does not look like a Ferrari. Every previous departure from formula, the California convertible, the Purosangue SUV, the Portofino, retained something unmistakably Ferrari in the way it drove or the way it sounded. The Luce has none of those anchors. The sound system is one technically interesting detail: rather than a synthesised soundtrack pumped through the speakers, the Luce captures vibrations from the axles and amplifies them into the cabin. Ferrari's own engineers also built the motors in-house, and the battery pack is designed to accept future cell technology as it improves. These are genuine engineering commitments, not marketing talking points.
The podcast's more considered argument is about what the Luce represents for Ferrari's brand position over the next decade. Ferrari has consistently made money by being aspirational to the point of frustration, maintaining long waiting lists, and never building quite as many cars as the market demanded. That scarcity is what sustained the resale premiums that made ownership feel like a financial asset as much as a car. The Luce is positioned as a volume play aimed at new customers in markets like China where four-door practicality sells better than sports cars. If those buyers don't materialise at $600,000, Ferrari is left with a car that alienated existing enthusiasts without replacing them. The comparison to Lamborghini is instructive: Lamborghini quietly ended its own all-electric programme after reading the same customer signals, choosing to electrify its existing lineup with hybrids instead.
Bottom line: The Luce is the most consequential product decision Ferrari has made in a generation, and not in a good way. A $600,000 EV that accelerates no faster than a $140,000 Lucid, looks like a capable Polestar, and carries no trace of Ferrari's driving character has almost no path to becoming a desirable object. Ferrari has been wrong about customer reactions before and recovered. This one feels different because the brand mystique that carried them through California and Purosangue controversies is the thing being spent here, not defended.